"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the whole world. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe." --Neil Gaiman, Sandman
I once was young and now I'm old . . . older, anyway. But I remember younger days, when my friends and I explored another world. We called it Newoldearth, or sometimes just Newold. Maybe it was our own earth's legendary past. Maybe it was her far future. We weren't sure.
We were knights and thieves, sorcerers and barbarians. We were slaves and we were kings. We were elves and goblins and eldrich abominations. We were the brightest of heroes, and the blackest of villains.
We sailed barges down the great River Danu through the fields and forests of Urlaen and climbed the peaks of the Greylance Mountains. We rode under the bright sun of the fields of Beldaroth and wandered lost in the eternal night of the Dhaark Makash. We walked the noisy bazaars of Great Callain and trekked across the silent deserts of Ankalast and the Sarad'Kur. We feasted in the halls of the House of Pendragon, treated with the Were-Lords of the Esgierden, and suffered under the whip of Zalaasi slave-traders. We sailed beyond the Amerlath Ocean to feast with the Kynn and the Orodruini and to seek the fabled Dreamchild in the dark vastness of the Great Wuld.
We saw the rise and fall of empires, forged kingdoms of our own out of the mountain valleys, discovered the ruins of the ages before Man, did battle with stone and steel both, and rode airships in the clouds. We were legends. We were forgotten. We were men and women both, simply trying to survive and thrive in a hard, magical, beautiful world.
This was our world. These are our stories.
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